Have you tried to be funny and failed horribly? Yeah, join the club. Or have you witnessed someone crash and burn by either being plain unfunny or offensively unfunny? Tell us your stories of sense of humour failure

Thanks to the charmingly named Reginald Donkeyfuck (not related to the Cheshire branch of the Donkeyfuck family, one presumes)

2nd Year, so most of us in the course knew each other well enough to have had a pissy snog in the tavern or shared some ecstasy and a backrub at one of the mixers - what can I say, 90's uni student. Chris had transferred to this course from another uni only just scraping in with the required amount of core units.Chris was a bit "different". He was quite the party animal and when pissed he thought it was the height of hilarity to 'dak' someone (usually an attractive drunk member of the opposite sex). Dakking or 'pantsing' being when one rushes up an quickly pulls down the trousers/jeans/skirt of an unsuspecting victim and then run away, often leaving them in their underwear or worse if they've chosen to go commando.This was the 90's so people were a little less free and easy with the litigious behaviour - occasionally a boyfriend or such would jump up and chase Chris (usually long gone) whilst the victims friends would provide cover & assist her in getting her pants back on.Don't get me wrong tho - what Chris did was pure sexual harassment. I doubt he ever waited till he got home before he pulled his pud out and savoured a jizz-flavoured memory before depositing it in the Wank Bank. He was a nasty perverted little weasel. The kind of guy you wish you carried those antibacterial wipes with you to use afterwards in case you had to shake hands with them.

One person who took exception to Chris was Jenny. Jen was one of the few mature age students in our course. She was quite a tall lady, her legs were long and lovely and very well toned. Her boobs were quite voluminous but didn't seem to move naturally with her body. She also had fairly large hands and feet. To anyone but the fucking village idiot Jenny was clearly a pre or post-op transgender person. No one who knew Jen at school felt any need to talk about her 'situation' and those of us who knew her outside of school never gave it a second thought. At the end of the day she was very easy on the eyes.Jenny really hated Chris - during tutorials it would be her that hammered him on a particular point that he may have made that was incorrect. When it came to class based assessments she would single him out for his lack of polish in his work and general lack of knowledge in our classes. Chris seemed to be non-the-wiser that Jenny wasn't what she appeared to be - often making sexist comments about her size, the size of her tits and or her husky voice. Which of course annoyed Jenny even more.

Thus Jenny decided one night (at one of the Student Union "Wine and Cheese" nights - a good excuse to eat 'special' brownies and get pissed) to get her revenge on Chris. She wore a nice blouse with no bra, which was quite tight across her lovely breasts and some loose happy pants. She knew anecdotally that loose pants were one of Chris's favourite victims in dakking - easy to pull down quickly. Chris of course got pissed and then started scouting for a 'pantsee'. Very quickly he noticed his nemesis with her nipples poking out and in a pair of loose pants no less. He snuck drunkenly in for the kill. And then he went for it, diving in and yanking Jenny's pants down.To be met with the sight of Jenny's semi-turgid 8" dick. Clearly Jenny was enjoying this.Rather than his usual dash Chris seemed to be stuck and having not got his usual dose of lacy knickers or white granny undies he all but got slapped in the face with a a well built blokes cock.Jenny leaned forward and said in her best husky tranny voice and with great aplomb - "Baby if you're not going to suck it why did you pull my pants down?"

That provided Chris with the impetus to get up and go. Which he did. No one saw him for a few weeks and the last anyone in our course saw of him was when he came in to defer out of that course for a year.
(s0ckpuppetlogging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Fri 23 Aug 2013, 9:55,
21 replies)

Last year my mother had a couple of strokes (umph pardon)
(That's not the lead balloon)

I was sitting with her a few days after she got out of hospital when 2 stroke nurses came out to check on her progress.

Nurse 1 : (to my mother) "Well here we have your care pack" points to a load of bumff and booklets from the NHS.

Nurse 2 : (to me) "And have you taken the time to read the care for someone with a stroke booklet?"

Me : "Yeah, it's an interesting read.... But all the text slopes off on the right hand side"

SILENCE (Apart from my mother who was uncontrollably laughing.) I've seen them twice since and still get evil stares.
(tim1701I have no board signature!!!!!, Fri 23 Aug 2013, 7:45,
6 replies)

I was on the way to a very important business pitch
in a car full of the people who run my company, as the monkey they trot out to say "and the person who'll actually DO the work is..."

We passed a kebab shop that was called "Troy kebabs", and I decided to laugh and say "HA - Timao danaos et doner ferentes".

Turns out Virgil-based puns are not a way to ingratiate yourself with senior managers, and there was an awkward silence. I'm not sure they're a way to ingratiate yourself with anyone.

Student SOH Failure
In one of my incarnations I was a student at one of your seats of higher education. I won’t pretend it was anywhere good, it was a red-brick Polytechnic in the West Midlands, near the very bottom of the league table. This was the late 1980s and everything was right on and politically correct – there was a Nelson Mandela bar, LGBT Societies, marches against anti-abortionists, etc, etc. There lies the foundation of my fall from grace.

I had quite a wide circle of friends, up until the incident I am about to relate. (And, sorry, fans, it won’t be a long one this time. I’ll try though – you never know, I might swerve into a lengthy digression about Ice Warriors or the political intrigues of Tara, or the best winter gear to wear on Ribos, or something. And hey! That was a little digression in itself there, to tell you that I might be digressing! Truly, I am disappearing up my own arse).

Back to the story. One evening, I was down the Student Union with my circle of friends drinking McEwan’s lager (not export, the pissy normal kind) for 70p a pint. I know – rather expensive. One of us had the idea of submitting stories to Viz and/or Poot, and so we were discussing potential comic strips. I was getting frustrated as all their ideas were hopelessly lame. Flosbert the Bird, anyone? USP – he flies around and shits on people. The Fridge Thing – a fridge that turns into a monster and eats people. Adolf the Gerbil – well, you can probably guess. Fucking shite. Admittedly, one of us did have an idea for a strip about the wacky adventures of middle-class students that was more or less Student Grant, but we dismissed it as too niche, and were gobsmacked when Student Grant actually appeared in 1992 (perhaps someone from Viz was in the Union and had overheard us?). None of these ideas were funny or fucked up enough.

So I dropped this into the mix: ‘Hey, what about a strip about someone suffering from AIDS? It could be called “Adrian Ayds – He’s Got Aids”, and the strapline could be “It’s Fun To Be HIV.” ’

Max, a blond-haired flamboyant homosexual fond of bright yellow shirts and red dungarees, simply rose gracefully from his seat, walked over to me, and spat in my face. He then walked out and never spoke to me again.

I turned my dripping face towards my best mates Brian and Mike, but they avoided my gaze and then got up to leave.

Soon I was completely alone with a face full of gay spittle and half a pint of pissy lager. I felt cold and hollow, as if my insides had been scooped out, and I knew then that nothing would ever be the same again.

I was ostracised for three months. No-one spoke to me unless absolutely necessary. I was barred from the Union and had to drink in The Smiling Man with the troglodytic locals. Fellow students spat at me. I had death threats slid under the door of my room in College Hall, and my room was regularly broken into and trashed, my kettle pissed in, turds left steaming on my pillow, etc.

When Hepzibah’s brother died she came at me with a pair of scissors. Never saw her again after that, she dropped out, and I heard that she’d become a drug addict and prostitute and contracted HIV herself. Circle of life. Or, rather, death.

I was only, and with great hesitation, let back in after I had published a full and frank apology in the student mag and read this apology out on stage in the Union in front of all my fellow students.

Jeremy Beadle's small hand
Alone at a BBQ a mutual friend introduced me to very beautiful girl. We got on brilliantly, everything looked positive. Personally, I believe I was very sexy and hilarious: a font of high class jokes and cerebral humour.

That is until the drink and nerves kicked in... I picked up one of those large 660ml bottles of beer in one hand, and a small bottle of beer in the other. Instantly I reverted to type and announced loudly to the girl and the wider group "look I'm Jeremy Beadle!". Bemused faces. I desperately felt the need to elucidate.

"Jeremy Beadle. He's got a small hand" (Waves big bottle of beer)"Well he's dead now, but he had a very small hand"(Jiggles large bottle beside small bottle)"You mean you haven't heard that joke. You know... Jeremy Beadle's got a big penis. But on the other hand its quite small"(Half-heartedly jiggles large bottle of beer in a masturbatory motion)

EVERYONE turned their back on me and started new conversations. Jeremy Beadle's hand is cursed.
(Parmenu, Fri 23 Aug 2013, 7:08,
2 replies)

I once made everyone hate me with out saying a single word
I was once waiting for a kebab in a late night take away in Huddersfield. The place was quite busy with various groups of inebriated student types who'd all got the munchies from their various nights out. They'd all ordered their food and were now (like me) waiting to be called to collect it from the front and so were all just quietly standing and staring at the menu. No one spoke or so much as looked at each other while they were waiting. I remember that I'd just thought it strange how weirdly quiet it was considering so many people were in there when a total scumtard walked through the door.

You know the type. The jeans round the knees, the Burberry cap, and the gold chain that looked like it was heavier than he was. He clearly liked to think he was gangsta despite the fact he probably lived with his librarian mum and pet guinea pig.

He swaggered up to the front and ordered a can of coke, paid and went to leave. As he turned around though he caught site of quite a large girl sat in the corner, stopped, turned to look her straight in the face and shattered the silence with the words "Bet you ordered chips dint yer yer fat cunt!"

And then he left, leaving behind him a lot of people taking intakes of breath and shaking their heads disapprovingly, one upset fat girl, her friends asking if she was okay...and me...trying to stifle the fact that I was absolutely pissing myself.

In my defense, it wasn't that I'd found what he said funny. It was just how harsh and unexpected it was. The same reason I find "Whats the difference between a rock and a baby?" funny. Everybody turned at stared at me, and I had nearly recovered when the guy who ran the takeaway read her name out followed by her order...chips. I was gone
(Furness, Thu 22 Aug 2013, 19:08,
14 replies)

Up the pass!
I still cringe when I think about this, yet at the time I was completely oblivious.

Living as a backpacker in Sydney at the time I'd made various friends from casual employment and was invited along to a birthday party at a local bar. I was introduced to various people I'd not met before by the host and left chatting with a couple of fellas.

I'd recently starting working at a hire car company so conversation drifted into that topic and they told me about how they'd recently written off a hire car while on holiday.

Apparantly they'd been collecting the car, a 4x4 jeep, and the sales person had asked about the level of insurance cover they wanted as they'd opted for the basic minimum. When they questioned it they were told "Well with this one, if you crashed it then you've just bought a wrecked jeep". So they decided to err on the side of caution and went for something a little more comprehensive.

Luckily for them that they did as apparantly less than an hour later they ventured off road and were motoring along an unsurfaced track, lost control and rolled the jeep into the ditch.

One of the guys described to me "The eeriest thing was one second you have all the noise and the next there was silence except the CD was still playing"....

I dunno why, not for the life of me can I think how it may have been relevant, but I asked what they had been listening to. They looked at one another and said they thought it was a Kylie CD or something. Anyway, my mouth opened and I said "Oh that's ok then, imagine if it had been something dodgy like the village people.... That may have looked a bit odd if someone came along and found you with that playing.... you know, 2 blokes alone in the middle of nowhere.... might have been a bit suspicious..." - Nope, not even a glimmer of humour, maybe it was because I was totally oblivious to any possible signs before me.

The two chaps went to get a drink and my friendly host came over, "They're a lovely couple arn't they?".

Turns out I'd just made a joke about not wanting to be mistaken for a "couple of queers", to a gay couple.
(golddustQOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Thu 22 Aug 2013, 15:09,
Reply)

I have worked for several German companies in the last 20 years
I have found that the guys I worked with have been hard-drinking fun people to be with - mostly younger than me with a healthy disregard for our respective countries' historical spats.One guy was a fan of English sportscars - god alone knows why - and he'd bought a a Spitfire which he'd lovingly restored to pristine condition. One day, I'd been invited to his gaff near Frankfurt for a serious pissup with his friends and their parents etc. We all traipsed to his garage where he kept his Jensen (a mint FF no lie), his three MGs and the aforementioned Spitfire (which he hadn't mentioned that he owned).On seeing it, my cry of 'ACHTUNG, SPITFIRE' didn't go down well with the older members of the group, particularly with his Grandfather (who'd been shot down in the battle of Britain and spent the rest of the war in captivity) but the younger guys found it hilarious.TL;DR Brit keeps bringing up the war, old Kraut doesn't find it funny.
(Captain Placid24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Sat 24 Aug 2013, 18:54,
13 replies)

Corporate takeovers, 1960s style
This happened long before I was born but my dad was in the room as a representative of the staff. A medium-sized precision engineering firm called Foxalls & Sons had been bought by Krupp, and Herr Krupp himself had come to its home counties offices to sign the contracts and meet his new employees

Small talk doesnt come easy to former nazi 'war production leaders' so he asked Mr.Foxall, the retiring MD, if he had ever been to Germany. Which Foxall had apparently been waiting for all day..

"Oh yes, 28 times, including to your splendid factories at Essen. But I never landed.."

Just remembered this one...
On holiday a few years ago with some mates, when a young girl wearing a bikini walked down into the sea.

"Fucking hell" exclaimed one mate "She's a KILF"

I swear even the sun went a bit dimmer as he said it...
(skullfunkerryIn case of implosion do not look into implosion, Wed 28 Aug 2013, 17:33,
17 replies)

I went to a musician friend's party once
and got rather hammered on the special punch that was being served (it consisted of a bottle of vodka, one of rum, one of red wine, plus cloves and orange slices, plus anything else that was added as the host got more drunk). Inspired by recent events, I ended up telling the joke, "What weighs five pounds and won't get plucked this Christmas? John Denver's guitar!"

To a roomful of acoustic guitarists/folk musicians.

Tumbleweed.

I did not add to the merriment of the evening.

I think I got forgiven, but it took me a while to remove the foot from my mouth.
(wolfpussywill nibble your fingers on, Sun 25 Aug 2013, 18:52,
10 replies)

Jamming
I was with a dozen or so newly-made friends in Boston, Massachusetts a few years back at someone's house, having a few beers and pizzas as is the way there. The subject of donuts came up and eager to please and impress my new trans-Atlantic buddies came out with a sure-fire donut joke winner. (although why I was convinced they wouldn't have heard it before I'm not sure)

Oops
I was at gathering of folk with my parents and their friends, when one particularly serious lady was telling everyone how upset she was that her son was going away and that the family dog may die when he wasn 't around.

Me: How do you know the dog won't last?Her: She's just had a stroke.Me: I thought dogs loved those?

I used to work in a mostly-female office in Wood Green
and Blondie stuck out a bit. Most of my colleagues where from the big bad smoke, but she hailed from the sticks, and, at 27, still lived a sheltered life with mummy and daddy in the dull, safe orbital dormitory town she'd grown up in.

A new Primark opened near us, and the mostly-women chattered about this over lunch, reveling in the prospect of inexpensive shoes and trying on each other's pants. They moved on to discuss different shoes, and then other cheap, shit clothes stores, at which point someone asked if anyone remembered Eisenegger.

"Eisernegger?" said Blondie "we used to do this thing out my way, when we saw someone in Eisernegger clothes, we'd do this with our hands and say 'hey Eiser-negger'"We didn't get it."Eyz-ah-negger"Still didn't."Bloody hell! I's-a-nigger. Get it? Cos it was shit, and black people.."

Oh dear
I'm the manager at a shop with a team of about 30 employees. My regional manager was in my store doing a scored store audit where he checks my tills, cash flow, sales, budgets, merchandising, shrinkage etc. All of this is recorded on a standardised form for all of the company. I get a score and a pat on the back or a kicking.

One of the things tasks he has to perform to fill out the sheet is to speak to a member of my team and ask them how they are, how is morale and is there anything they would change. He wanders into the back of house where two of my staff members are. One is a pretty young girl and the other is a big black bloke. He proceeds to ask the girl his questions.

He comes to the question "is there anything you would change?" Before she can answer my assistant manager appears at the door, points at the black bloke and blurts out;"I Know what he would change, He would be a white man if he could Ha Ha Ha"

*massively awkward silence*

When he was challenged about what on earth possessed him to say such a thing he set off on an awkward attempted arse covering rant about Michael Jackson.

Impressing Ben Elton
1983 - the heyday of 'alternative' comedy (based on storytelling not punchlines) and I go to the Winter Gardens in Bournemouth to see Ryk Mayall, Ben Elton and Andy De La Tour on their national tour. After the gig, my friend Richard (we've had to call him 'Ryk' ever since!) wanted to get Mr Mayall's autograph as did many others and we went backstage where he joined the queue. Not being so enamoured I found myself standing against a wall next to Messrs Elton and DeLaTour.Well, what an opportunity! I had only recently heard what I considered to be a BRILLIANT joke. Made me chortle and was my current favourite. So I started to tell it to my new best mate Ben.Now... although I was 18, I was VERY naive! I didn't even realise that Mr Elton was of Jewish descent. The joke consisted of some Jewish gentlemen discovering a German tank in the desert and one-by-one dying of exhaustion in an attempt to push it to a scrapyard to get some money for it. I must admit the punchline (head pops out of turret, looks around and says into the tank "Hey Hans I think we've run out of Jews") didn't go down very well.After a few seconds of awkward silence B.E. turns to me, says "I don't do jokes" then walks off.I don't to this day really know if he was being honest, utterly offended or whether he was just pissed off because no-one was queueing for his autograph.
(mikey2gorgeous4u, Wed 28 Aug 2013, 11:42,
8 replies)

Low score
A couple of years I was running a stand at the Big Bang Fair in London. No, children, it's not funny, settle down. The Big Bang Fair is a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) event for schoolchildren with a family day or two at the end. It's great fun to go to and you get to meet some delightful geeks in the making.

The organisers put on various shows and talks, and my stall was right next to an arena seating about 300 where, every day, a chap from the Football Association gave a talk about the Science of Football. It was a really interesting talk, well presented, with great demonstrations. However ...

The fifteen thousand children per day who attend a Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths fair are probably, by definition, the fifteen thousand children in the area who are least interested in football. The first time he did the talk, he got an audience of eight. The second time he got three. The last time, on family day, the seats were very well filled, mainly, as far as I could see, by escaping fathers.

Poor sod. I really felt for him, particularly because, as I wrote, it was a great show, but designed to interest footballing children in science rather than to interest mini geeks in football.
(ubergeekian, Sat 24 Aug 2013, 18:29,
Reply)

Wedding rings
If you're unfortunate enough to break a bone badly enough that it needs pinning, you are sometimes allowed to keep the screws and pins once (if) they are removed. My A level physics teacher was telling us that just such a thing had happened to him, and that he had decided to have his wedding ring made from the melted-down pins.

"That's a bit odd" I commented. "That you should choose to indicate your marriage with a momento from a massive and painful accident".

SHITPANTS NUGENT THAT'S WHAT
I LIKED THIS SONG BACK IN 68 AND IT STILL ROCKS, BUT IT WAS THE WHOLE PACKAGE, NOT JUST THE GUITAR LICK. BUT IN 2013, FUCK SHITPANTS NUGENT. HE IS ALL TOUGH, BUT WHEN IT WAS HIS TIME T5O HAVE BULLE4TS WIZ BY HIS HEAD, HE SHIT HIMSELF HERE AT HOME. FUCK HIM AND FUCK HIS DENIALS. EVEN IF IT ISN'T TRUE, IF YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO TELL THAT STORY, NOW﻿ YOU OWN IT SHITPANTS. NO GETTING AWAY FROM IT.
(Naked Apecall me Caitlyn, Thu 22 Aug 2013, 15:46,
6 replies)

Oh God
A client had told me tearfully in the pub about how she'd accidentally run over her cat. I told people in the team hoping they'd just be nice to her and not mention it.

Anyway, next time we're on a conference call, she says something about 'Category sales month on month are fairly stable, and in fact we haven't seen much fluctuation over the last two quarters.', and someone chimes in with 'So you could say the cat. is pretty flat?'.

Tumbleweed.

I had to promise her that he'd never speak to her again and we moved him to a different team.
(SnowyTheWereRabbitthe Leporid from Hell, Thu 22 Aug 2013, 13:38,
Reply)

Not my proudest moment
Many, many year ago I settled in a small South Cambridgeshire village. The community was predominantly singles and young marrieds and we soon got to know each other.Every weekend after excursions to the local hostelries, we would inevitably end up in someone’s house for a continuation of the evening.

One of my neighbours (who was Welsh), had been telling us for the previous few weeks that his younger brother was coming to visit.On this evening in question, I arrived a bit late and everyone had assembled. After the ‘Hi’s and ‘Hello’s, we are all seated and conversations resume.

I then noticed a pair of feet (obviously attached to legs and the rest of the body) stretched out from the far end of the sofa. On the feet were the most bleeding awful pair of platform shoes ever seen. They must have been at least 15 years out of fashion. Peering around, I also noticed that he was wearing tinted specs and a nylon bomber jacket.This, I surmised, must be the younger brother, and fair game.

Half way through a sentence, I suddenly shouted “Uggi Uggi Uggi” and his immediate reply of “Oi Oi Oi” confirmed my deduction and I knew I had a live one.The conversation went thus:“From that little outburst, I guess you must be the younger brother”“I am indeed, boyo”“Well I am pleased to meet you, but I think I must take older brother to task for not preparing us properly for your arrival. Now I have noticed that you are not quite the same as the rest of us, how do you feel about that?”“What do you mean, boyo?”“Well you are different, does that make you feel awkward?”“Do you want to waken up seeing Jesus Christ?”(I became very aware that the neighbours were looking at me in aghast. Eyes as wide open as their mouths. Now this surprised me as they knew I remorselessly took the mickey from everyone)“Don’t be like that, please. It is rather obvious and must be on the mind of everyone here but they are just being too polite to mention it”.“You’ll be shitting teeth, boyo”(Again, looking at the neighbours, they were all affected by total paralysis. Oh crap, this is getting to be a struggle, I thought, time to stop)“Look, it is not your fault that you have two club feet”He burst out laughing and there was a collective sigh of relief from the neighbours as the tension suddenly evaporated.

It was sometime later that evening the conversation got round to height. I was asked and replied “Something over 6’2””.“I am 4”7”” says the younger brother who promptly stands up to reveal that, yes, he was 4’7” and had a hump on his back…

I felt like vomiting. I could have left that room by sliding under the closed door.

He stayed for years, we did become friends and I learnt to shut the fuck up.
(bof, Tue 27 Aug 2013, 15:14,
6 replies)

So we were on a minibus tour in America with twelve other strangers, including two lads from Munich, and a couple from Paris.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.

The guide was good - he learnt everyon's name immediately, where they were from, and made a wee crack at their expense as he drove, and was perfectly happy to take a crack at his, too.

Mrs V and I were at the front of the bus, so subject to a significant amount of his commentary and questions.

As we drove, he explained about the area and stuff, and somehow managed to get on to talking about railways.

"Hey, Vagabond - how d'ya like your railways in England then? Are they any good?" He asked.

"Well" I said, hearing the mechanism start to whirr, and the bomb bay doors start to open, "they're ok - I think a lot of unnecessary fuss is made over them - but I wish we had a shiny new system like France since the Germans flattened theirs."

To a collective intake of breath, and the guide saying, "If you don't mind I'd rather keep politics out of my van if it's all the same to you. So - coming up here on your left you'll see ... "

Fuck's sake - 6000 miles, 70 years, a holiday trip of a lifetime for many of us, and I manage to go and mention the fucking War.
(Je suis un vagabondis an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Sat 24 Aug 2013, 15:17,
2 replies)

I was at Monkey World in sunny Dorset.
They have a load of capuchin monkeys that have been rescued from a Chilean vivisection lab. They're not in very good shape, very fat with a lot of missing fur. When the hippy looking MILF type stood next to me said,'Look at the poor monkeys, that lab must have done terrible things to them' my answer was,'yeah, but they all want to go back, they're gagging for a fag'. From the look she gave me, you would have thought I had just shit in her handbag.
(Edenmonsteris still bored, Fri 23 Aug 2013, 20:18,
Reply)